Thursday, May 11, 2006

Vanishing Act

When the cities are on fire with the burning flesh of menJust remember that death is not the endAnd you search in vain to find just one law abiding citizenJust remember that death is not the end - Bob Dylan

Afraid I don't have time today to discuss these, but some stories need attention:

From Wednesday's Mirror the headline, "Have 200,000 AK47s Fallen Into the Hands of Iraq Terrorists?" (also see this thread on the RI discussion board):

Some 200,000 guns the US sent to Iraqi security forces may have been smuggled to terrorists, it was feared yesterday.

The 99-tonne cache of AK47s was to have been secretly flown out from a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms have vanished.

Orders for the deal to go ahead were given by the US Department of Defense. But the work was contracted out via a complex web of private arms traders.

And the Moldovan airline used to transport the shipment was blasted by the UN in 2003 for smuggling arms to Liberia, human rights group Amnesty has discovered.

It follows a separate probe claiming that thousands of guns meant for Iraq's police and army instead went to al-Qaeda.

Amnesty chief spokesman Mike Blakemore said: "It's unbelievable that no one can account for 200,000 assault rifles. If these weapons have gone missing it's a terrifying prospect." American defence chiefs hired a US firm to take the guns, from the 90s Bosnian war, to Iraq.

But air traffic controllers in Baghdad have no record of the flights, which supposedly took off between July 2004 and July 2005. A coalition forces spokesman confirmed they had not received "any weapons from Bosnia" and added they were "not aware of any purchases for Iraq from Bosnia". Nato and US officials have already voiced fears that Bosnian arms - sold by US, British and Swiss firms - are being passed to insurgents. A NATO spokesman said: "There's no tracking mechanism to ensure they don't fall into the wrong hands. There are concerns that some may have been siphoned off." This year a newspaper claimed two UK firms were involved in a deal in which thousands of guns for Iraqi forces were re-routed to al-Qaeda.

It's always a bang-your-head-against-the-wall moment, reading again the play the incompetence theory receives, even from some of the Administration's harshest mainstream critics. But then, even to talk of an "administration" may be misdirection at this point, given how little representative government means in the United States these days, and how much of "national security" has been privatized into a global gangland of drugs and guns.

Like the tens of billions of dollars that have been "lost" in Iraq, planeloads of arms don't just "vanish"; not when the Pentagon contracts the work to an international criminal of Bout's untouchable stature. But Bout's name isn't likely to be mentioned in whatever coverage this story receives, before it sinks like so many others beneath the media's frothing triviality.

Meanwhile, a decision's been reached in the trial of Toledo priest Gerald Robinson. And it's guilty:

The Rev. Gerald Robinson appeared stony-faced as the jury's guilty verdict was read, and he blinked repeatedly and glanced at his lawyers before being led away in handcuffs.

...

The crime occurred in the sacristy adjoining the hospital chapel in downtown Toledo on the Saturday before Easter in 1980. Investigators said the nun, Margaret Ann Pahl, 71, was strangled and then stabbed, with nine wounds on her chest forming the shape of an inverted cross, a well-recognized Satanic symbol.

An altar cloth was draped over her half-naked body, which was posed as if she had been sexually assaulted.

"It was about how he could humiliate her the most," prosecutor Dean Mandros said in closing arguments. "He left a message for everyone to see … maybe to God himself."

After the sentencing one of Robinson's tearful supporters "turned to Claudia Vercellotti, a local leader of the Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests [SNAP], who had helped reopen the case, and told her, 'I hope you rot in hell!'"

More than ever, police and prosecutors have the tools and the will to go after horrific crimes, even when the defendants are seemingly powerful individuals or institutions.

When victims and witnesses stay silent, nothing changes. When victims and witnesses speak up, at least sometimes a child is protected, the truth is exposed, and justice is done.

The murder weapon, Robinson's letter opener:

Finally, from an email, a follow-up on the reopening of the investigation into the Atlanta Child Murders:

Dekalb County Police Chief Louis Graham...the man who reopened the investigations last year, is mysteriously stepping down. And of all the people who the county is getting to find a replacement...is none other than Lee Brown, the original supervisor of the Atlanta PD, who was in office during the murders and the subsequent investigation.

SNAP is right in part. Police and prosecutors have the tools. The will is another matter. Some do, individually. But institutionally? That's still the domain of those who don't.

Small polygamous groups have existed in the southwestern US under the watchful yet fairly benign eye of authorities ever since a sect known as the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) separated itself from mainstream Mormonism in 1890.

...

Now, FLDS leader Warren Jeffs has been added to the FBI's list of "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives," a move that caps law enforcement's dramatic change of approach toward the polygamous group in recent years...[because of] the impact that the group's practices, law enforcement officials say, are having on the most vulnerable within the sect, particularly children and women.

When the FLDS under Mr. Jeffs (and his father before him) grew to some 10,000 followers in several southwestern communities with estimated assets of $110 million; when it became clear that government officials, school authorities, and police in those communities had become intertwined with the sect; when ex-members increasingly reported child and sexual abuse charges (mainly involving underage girls forced to marry older men); and when the sect began to use secluded compounds, state and federal authorities started to crack down more vigorously.

...

Specifically, Jeffs is charged in Utah and Arizona with sexual assault of underage girls and with arranging "spiritual" marriages for girls and older men. At weekend press conferences in Salt Lake City and Phoenix, FBI and state officials said Jeffs "is considered armed and dangerous and may be traveling with armed bodyguards." In the past, he has talked in apocalyptic terms about a violent end to the world, according to former members.

...

As with Christian Identity and other hate-related philosophies tied to the Aryan Nations and the neo-Nazi Creativity Movement, Jeffs has preached racism as well. "The black race is the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth," Jeffs has said as cited by the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Intelligence Report."

An editorial in the church-owned Deseret Morning News in Salt Lake City earlier this year acknowledged that "the state's history, a conservative belief in free choice, and an unwillingness to stir up a hornet's nest in the national media have likely all contributed to the kid-glove approach lawmakers and law-enforcement officers have taken when dealing with polygamous communities."

Maybe I'm missing something here, but how, exactly, does one 'Loose' 200,000 AK47's? "There's no tracking mechanism in place"?!?!? Never mind. No need to worry. I'm sure this kind of thing goes on all the time. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming....

I read of a case not long ago when some people were trying to get a polygamous judge taken off the bench for not obeying state law. Of course law enforcement has dragged it's feet when members are taking part in the activity themselves. Personally I don't give a damn what adults do to one another as long as there is no abuse invovled. It is the marrying off of young girls to older men often close relatives that enfurates me. Also these cults have multimillions yet the women and kids live in poverty so the leaders can live the high life. In the Warren Jeffs cult he reassigns wives if the husband displeases him or to reward the new husband. Husbands marry mothers and teen daughters at the same time. a rare form of retardation is showing up in that group more than anywhere else in the world. It is genetic and the child needs to get the gene from both parents to turn into a vegetable instead of a thinking child. The doctor begs them to stop intermarrying but they say they have to keep the blood pure. look up fumarase deficiency for more info. Also look up the kingston family. One member actually was convicted of beating his teen daughter unconcious when she ran away from 'marriage' to her father's own brother. no one was charged for forced marriage, only the beating.

So we "lost" some weapon? It'sa good thing too. We wouldn't want those terrorists to run out of shit to shoot at us. Then the war might stop & all those juicy profits would just evaporate.What's a few dead soldiers in comparison to keeping all those defense contractors awash in all that tax cash?

They really are milking the incompetence angle though, aren't they?

Just another big Iraq whoopsie daisy, huh?

Christ, you'd think America would get a bit tired of these guys treating her like she was populated with nothing but gullible idiots.

I suppose that it's damn lucky for the GOP that she is populated with gullible idiots.

The Pentagon is bypassing official US intelligence channels and turning to a dangerous and unruly cast of characters in order to create strife in Iran in preparation for any possible attack, former and current intelligence officials say...

And MEK -- the Iranian (not Iraqi) terror group in question -- is itself unquestionably a cult:

As the leaders like to boast, the Mujahedeen is a family affair. (''We have three generations of martyrs: grandmothers, mothers, daughters.'') Most of the girls I was meeting had grown up in Mujahedeen schools in Ashraf, where they lived separated from their parents. Family visits were allowed on Thursday nights and Fridays. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, many of these girls were transported to Jordan and then smuggled to various countries -- Germany, France, Canada, Denmark, England, the United States -- where they were raised by guardians who were usually Mujahedeen supporters. When they were 18 or 19, many of them decided to come back to Iraq and fill the ranks of the youngest Mujahedeen generation. Though ''decided'' is probably not the right word, since from the day they were born, these girls and boys were not taught to think for themselves but to blindly follow their leaders. ''Every morning and night, the kids, beginning as young as 1 and 2, had to stand before a poster of Massoud and Maryam, salute them and shout praises to them,'' Nadereh Afshari, a former Mujahedeen deep-believer, told me. Afshari, who was posted in Germany and was responsible for receiving Mujahedeen children during the gulf war, said that when the German government tried to absorb Mujahedeen children into their education system, the Mujahedeen refused. Many of the children were sent to Mujahedeen schools, particularly in France. The Rajavis, Afshari went on to say, ''saw these kids as the next generation's soldiers. They wanted to brainwash them and control them.'' Which may explain the pattern to their stories: a journey to self-empowerment and the enlightenment of self-sacrifice inspired by the light and wisdom of Maryam and Massoud.

"Another generation of heavy metal has taken over, and — sorry — it ain’t just about strippers and dope. Okay, it’s partly about strippers and dope. And we’ll get around to that. But more and more, as metal evolves into a huge international music that belongs to everyone, it has gotten to be something weirder. It’s become a guardian of morality — not church morality; real morality. Praise be: Given the void in responsible behavior among governments, police, educational establishments and religions, the task of guiding our youth down the path of righteousness has fallen to... Satan"

So... put some information in there. You know, nature hates a void. :)

Richard, i agree, Hmmmmmm. How are chants of death and suicide ... morality. What about Manson's tees bearing the message, "Kill your parents". And were the Columbine killers acting out this "real morality" when they indescriminately murdered their classmates. They were death metal brainwashed fans, literally fulfilling the death metal paradigm, er ... morality. (not church morality, no that is phoney, love thy neighbor ... hell no, kill thy neighbor - now that is REAL MORALITY ?????) So, hmmmm indeed. I detect the hissing lisp of the lying serpent in this article. The deathly inversion of truth, ala satanism.

I think the jury's still out on exactly who did the brainwashing when in regard to the Columbine killers. Perhaps we should look at the death metal phenomenon less as an invitation to violence than as a couter-cultural response to the over hypocrisy of a large percentage of the 'Church-Morality' crowd, which gives a lot of lip service to loving thy neighbor, but doesn't apply that love very far beyond their own congregation. The last I checked, the Satanists have a long way to go to catch up with the death and destruction dealt out by self-proclaimed (though false) Christians. Irony is dead...Long live Irony!

Starroute:I wouldn't wonder too hard. The answer is likely D: all of the above, due to this being a complex reality we live in. But to me, without question, they often know perfectly well.

Here is a thought: When the appartently cognitively functional take actions that seem senseless and incompetent, it is a most certain sign that they have ulterior or hidden motives. They trust you and me to be befuddled by their actions, while they "do as they wilt".

& here I am thinking that I really must be getting old.Since the article was specifically about "death metal" I guess the author missed this little tidbit or we just have waaaaaaaaaaaaay different definitions of morality:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/4446342.stm

One man's relentless search for his missing son led him to uncover one of the most shocking crimes in post-war Italy - a tale of satanism and violence that has gripped the country for more than a year.

In January 1998 Fabio Tollis and Chiara Marino, both just 16, disappeared.

They had been drinking at a pub called the Midnight - the centre of the heavy metal scene in Milan - and they never came home.

The police and many of their friends just thought they had run off together. But their parents refused to accept this.

Michele Tollis, Fabio's father, began to attend metal concerts and festivals across Europe, handing out leaflets and quizzing Fabio's friends.

Fabio and his friends were into the most extreme forms of heavy metal music - death metal and black metal, music obsessed with images of murder and satanism - and the role of this music is central to the story.

No one can contradict me when I say that heavy metal and satanism are closely linkedMichele Tollis

It emerged that Chiara, the girl who disappeared with Fabio, had a collection of satanic literature and paraphernalia in her bedroom.

During this search, Michele Tollis became convinced that satanism had something to do with his son's disappearance.

"No one can contradict me when I say that heavy metal and satanism are closely linked. They're inseparable," he says.

Yeah, I think Jeff wrote on one of his posts here in the past several months: "To hell with death". I wholly agree, and would expand that statement to include: "To hell with death metal".The freaky thing here is that these bozos are seriously claiming the moral high ground ? ? ? ? ?Talk about a beat-your-head-against-the-wall moment!

And for 'Smartwolf' above, think about the inversion principle being employed. They are doing it deliberately.Do you really think GWB, and neocons in general are representative of true followers of Jesus of Nazareth? (I know, ignorant question) Then why call them, or any other phonies 'Christians', even if they themselves claim the appellation. They are merely imposters. Everything they claim is a lie, and this above all. So why even credit their claims? This only serves their purposes. They want to be identified as 'Christians', and I fully suspect that for some of them, the motivation behind their subterfuge is more than mere political advantage, and has a lot more to do with the black magician's practice of the inversion principle.We need to be more 'rigorous' about how we perceive these people. See them as they are, not for what they claim to be.

... the most extreme forms of heavy metal music - death metal and black metal, music obsessed with images of murder and satanism - and the role of this music is central to the story.

Almost all of the avant guard art movements of the early 20th Century (except for Italian Futurism) were labeled 'degenerate' by the National Socialists. Adolf Hitler even held an exhibition of 'degenerate art' in 1937, while curating a parallel show of 'Aryan' art across the street. The German Expressionist movement was destroyed as a result. Here's a quick overview of the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibit of 1937:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art

Ironically (or perhaps not), the notion of the 'degenerate' and 'degenerate art' was appropriated by the Nazis and its origins can be traced back to Jewish 'intellectual' Max Nordau and a 1892 book he authored called Degeneration.. Nordau was also the co founder of the World Zionist Organization.

When the apparently cognitively functional take actions that seem senseless and incompetent, it is a most certain sign that they have ulterior or hidden motives. They trust you and me to be befuddled by their actions, while they "do as they wilt."

A question:

Are the adherent of ‘Crowleyan Thelema’ and others of similar ilk appropriating or appropriating from the appropriators to redirect 'energy?' Does this reappropriation lead to or originate from the same place? Seems as if there is a clear distinction being made between the 'imaginary' Whore of Babalon and the actually Whore of Babylon, which is this global system. Is the distinction accurate and valid? Does the distinction actually exist? This is where the socio- political aspect of this conundrum comes into play.

My point is that these are all just questions and I am undecided as to the answers.

Here's another interesting example:

John Balance from Coil. (Don't wish to use Wikipedia again, it's just easier than spending time looking up more obscure and detailed information.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Balance

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1371372,00.html

Balance died in 2004 after a 'fall.'

He blended belief systems such as Shamanism, Christianity, Buddhism, Paganism, Hermeticism and Gnosticism and imbued Coil's vast output with a magickal current designed to have a functionally transcendent effect on listeners.

Reporting from the town where Susan Polk's trial is going on. I went across the bay last night to attend a farmer's market and music event. Lo and behold, the Mormons were there with a booth. Two young men delivering information about the Mormon genealogy program. Just give your email and/or phone number to these guys and they'll track down your family. I was amazed at the spiel they delivered. Kindly young men, but utterly programmed and brain-dead. I resisted asking any questions that would have required either of them to think. It would have been too painful to watch.

Important Kos Diary about bush's response to the gathering storm of scandals:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/12/232746/857

=Executive Orders - very creepy, very scaryThey have been accumulating for years, and basically give the president to sieze the government whenever he feels like it. But who would do a thing like that.... hey wait a minute

==Why did Bush revoke Executive Order 13011 today? by exmearden Fri May 12, 2006 at 08:27:46 PM PDTIn scanning the whitehouse.gov site today, I noticed the following Executive Order:

Simply, the questions permeate the entire 'Western (Mystery) Tradition' and perhaps 'Eastern' as well, as they relate to the confluence of politics and spirituality. For example, is the system of Crowleyan Thelema a failed alchemical process? Or was it supposed to initially be a process of alchemical appropriation? Similarly, is invoking ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses a reaffirmation of an oppressive and hierarchical system? In my opinion, people can no longer afford to partition out and compartmentalize personal spiritual and political systems. The 'high weirdness' and more hardcore political 'factions' must perhaps integrate and arrive at a synthesis. In regards to death metal, the problem is, once again, a question of education, history and the vacuous lack of perspective in American culture. Shall we censor the works of poet Charles Baudelaire as well? Baudelaire was perhaps one of the first ‘death metal’ artists.

A bit of a knee-jerk reaction from me there, and I apologize for my over-generalizations. My real problem is with literalist fundamentalists, of any religion. True believers are dangerous animals. I just get hung up on 'Christians', as they're the dominant form where I come from. Also, I'm quite clear on the fact that those in power now (and, in general, most anyone at the top of a pyrimidal power structure) tend to use the dominant religion as a cloak to hide their true motivations and as a tool to control the masses. It boggles the mind that ANYONE can take at face value Bush's claims to be a christian, yet many seem to do just that. I seem to remember something about 'by their works shall ye know them."

I do get my hackles up a bit when people haul out the old 'Rock-N-Roll made them do it' argument. Whie I don't subscribe to the notion that the things we watch or listen to have no effect on our behavior (which I think is patently rediculous), it does bother me when people single out a specific group of people to pin the blame on. Sub-cultures (as the lable implies) do not develope in a vacuum.

Again, I think the problem is people who sink to far into their own egos, and begin to take their personal metaphors a bit too literaly. These people are dangerous wether they're head-banging to 'Canibal Corpse' or humming along to 'Onward Christian Soldiers'. (The mixing of religion and militarism is a whole other topic....)

I have nothing but respect for people who adhear to non-violence, forgiveness, and charity, but it's important to remember that Christians (or 'Smartwolves') do not have a monopoly on that particular lifestyle.

The fact that the US government and media are having a hissy fit over Venezuela wanting to buy guns, and then 200,000 of the guns Chavez wants to buy go missing on their way to Iraq is definitely sus. I guess those guns will be located enroute to Venezuela or found in storage there by one of the US's local stooges and they then have a pretext to ramp the spin up a notch or two.

Whenever a feeling of aversion comes into the heart of a good soul,
it's not without significance.
Consider that intuitive wisdom to be a Divine attribute,
not a vain suspicion:
the light of the heart has apprehendedintuitively from the Universal Tablet. - Rumi